dimanche 26 avril 2015

Graeme Hamiltonwrites @ The National Post: The new Jewish exodus: Canada seen as safe haven for French Jews in wake of anti-Semitic attacks

Annual Israel march in downtown
Montreal, April 23, 2015.

When a gunman stormed into a kosher supermarket in Paris, seizing
hostages and killing four people, Julien Catan felt tremors all the way
to Montreal. A Paris native, he had walked the streets around the
Hyper-Cacher market thousands of times. His fiancée’s mother had been
shopping there 20 minutes before it was attacked. “What happened in January was a real shock, like never before,” Catan
said in an interview. “I think the impact it had is very profound, and I
think the Jewish community has taken a real hit.”

The murderous targeting of shoppers buying groceries before the
Sabbath, two days after an attack on the journalists of Charlie Hebdo,
came amid a surge in anti-Semitism that has Jews questioning how long
they can remain in France. More than ever, Canada is seen as a safe
haven, and leaders of Montreal’s Jewish community are only too happy to
extend a welcoming hand.

It was love that brought Catan, 28, to Montreal last year when he
joined his fiancée, who had moved from France five years ago to pursue
her studies. But the rise of anti-Semitic hatred back home makes the
Jewish couple reluctant to return as they contemplate raising a family.
Among their circle of Jewish friends in France, many are planning to
leave. “It was perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Catan
said of the January attacks. “It will lead people who were thinking of
leaving to take action.”

Like Catan, Adam Scheier was shaken by news of the January terror
attacks in Paris. The senior rabbi at Montreal’s Congregation Shaar
Hashomayim was at an event in Nashville, and instead of returning home,
he flew immediately to Paris as an expression of solidarity. “I found
fear,” he said in an interview. “Parents were telling me how terrified
they were to send their children to school.”

For Scheier, the sight of heavily armed soldiers guarding Jewish
schools clashed with the safety felt by North America’s Jewish
communities. Since his return, he has been pushing to make that North
American safety available to French Jews. “I think Quebec should
proactively be looking to welcome Jews from France who are looking to
leave,” he said.

“This is a Jewish community that has western liberal values that are
consistent with our Canadian values. This is a Jewish community that is
filled with professionals, people of achievement in law, in business,
medicine, sciences and the arts. This is a vibrant, dynamic community
that could make a contribution to our country, and this is a community
that speaks French, which is something that is very attractive for the
Quebec government.”

Montreal Jewish organizations have recently created a task force in
response to a steep increase in requests for information from French
Jews interested in moving to Canada. Monique Lapointe, manager of
immigration services for the social services agency Ometz, said her
organization alone received 70 such requests in the three months since
the January attacks, double what it would normally receive in a year.
The task force is looking at how the community can smooth immigration
from France, starting by helping potential immigrants navigate the
bureaucracy and letting them know what services are available once they
arrive. [...]

Whatever hurdles immigrants have to overcome, Frederic Saadoun says
it is worth the trouble. He moved from Paris to Montreal with his wife
and young children 10 years ago, as anti-Semitism began to rise in
France. There were assaults on Jewish children, anti-Semitic graffiti
near Jewish schools and advice from a rabbi not to wear Jewish symbols
in public. “We preferred leaving before things got worse,” Saadoun, 46,
said in an interview.

At the time, fellow Jews in France criticized him for leaving, but
now the same people tell him he did the right thing. “There are not a
lot of countries where you die because you are Jewish, but it happens in
France,” he said citing the Hyper-Cacher attack and the 2012 assault on
a Jewish school in Toulouse by an Islamist terrorist who murdered three
children and a rabbi. “There is a physical threat, but what is even more terrible — because
in the end, there is little chance of dying — is to be assaulted in
daily life,” he said. “My father, who lives in southern France, faces
verbal and physical abuse when he leaves synagogue. That sort of thing
happens every day.” He said his son and daughter, 17 and 15, are now perfectly at ease
displaying their Jewish identities in public.

It is when they return to
France to visit family that he has to warn them. “I tell them to be careful. In the métro, don’t show your Star of
David. Don’t display any distinctive symbol showing you are Jewish. They
no longer understand, because here they have no problem, they feel
safe,” he said. “Canada is peaceful and they do not at all feel threatened as Jews.
We have to teach them when they go to France how to behave as threatened
Jews.”More.